Ronnie Cummins: The Unholy Alliance: Monsanto, Dupont & Obama. President Obama knows that agribusiness cannot be trusted with the policy and regulatory powers of government. On the campaign trail in 2007, he promised: We'll tell ConAgra that it's not the Department of Agribusiness. It's the Department of Agriculture. We're going to put the people's interests ahead of the special interests.
But, starting with his choice for USDA Secretary, the pro-biotech former governor of Iowa, Tom Vilsack, President Obama has let Monsanto, Dupont and the other pesticide and genetic engineering companies know they'll have plenty of friends and supporters within his administration. President Obama has taken his team of food and farming leaders directly from the biotech companies and their lobbying, research, and philanthropic arms. Michael Taylor, former Monsanto Vice President, is now the FDA Deputy Commissioner for Foods.
Now, Ramona Romero, corporate counsel to DuPont, has been nominated by President Obama to serve as General Counsel for the U.S. Op-Ed Contributor - America Builds an Aristocracy. Proud Patriots -- and Harsh Critics of Government - Pew Research. Nearly all Americans consider themselves patriotic and voice pride in being American. Sizeable demographic and political differences do emerge, however, when it comes to intense expressions of patriotism. And many of those who voice strong patriotism and pride in the country also are highly critical of the federal government and its political leaders. A new national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted June 24-27 among 1,001 adults, finds that more than eight-in-ten (83%) say they are either extremely proud (52%) or very proud (31%) to be an American.
Just 14% say they are moderately proud (8%) or have little or no pride (6%) in being an American. Nearly six-in-ten (59%) non-Hispanic whites say they are extremely proud of being an American compared with 36% of non-Hispanic blacks. People younger than 30 also are less likely than older Americans to say they are extremely proud of being an American. Religion Among the Millennials - Pew Forum on Religion & Public. Introduction and Overview MILLENNIALS This is part of a Pew Research Center series of reports exploring the behaviors, values and opinions of the teens and twenty-somethings that make up the Millennial generation.
By some key measures, Americans ages 18 to 29 are considerably less religious than older Americans. Fewer young adults belong to any particular faith than older people do today. They also are less likely to be affiliated than their parents’ and grandparents’ generations were when they were young. Fully one-in-four members of the Millennial generation – so called because they were born after 1980 and began to come of age around the year 2000 – are unaffiliated with any particular faith. Indeed, Millennials are significantly more unaffiliated than members of Generation X were at a comparable point in their life cycle (20% in the late 1990s) and twice as unaffiliated as Baby Boomers were as young adults (13% in the late 1970s). Religious Affiliation Worship Attendance.
Katrina vs. the Spill: Useful Comparison? Matt Taibbi takes on New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman's. I think it was about five months ago that Press editor Alex Zaitchik whispered to me in the office hallway that Thomas Friedman had a new book coming out. All he knew about it was the title, but that was enough; he approached me with the chilled demeanor of a British spy who has just discovered that Hitler was secretly buying up the world’s manganese supply. Who knew what it meant but one had to assume the worst. “It’s going to be called The Flattening,” he whispered. Then he stood there, eyebrows raised, staring at me, waiting to see the effect of the news when it landed.
I said nothing. It turned out Alex had bad information; the book that ultimately came out would be called The World Is Flat. It didn’t matter. So I tried not to think about it. I stomped off, went through security, bought a Cinnabon, and glumly sat at the back of the B line, waiting to be herded on board so that I could hunt for space in the overhead bins. Forget the Cinnabon. Things are true because you say they are. Killers, Klansman, a King. Thomas Jefferson Feared an Aristocracy of Corporations | The Nat. Share Thomas Jefferson's name gets thrown around quite a bit these days by the Tea Partisans, which is a good thing. A populist movement of the right or the left that neglected Jefferson, the most radical of the first presidents, would be a sorry affair indeed.
Jefferson's distrust of concentrated and consolidated power was such that he left a legacy for any and every dissenter against the state. But Jefferson did not stop there. He was, as well, a relentless critic of the monopolizing of economic power by banks, corporations and those who put their faith in what the third president referred to as "the selfish spirit of commerce (that) knows no country, and feels no passion or principle but that of gain. Jefferson might not have wanted a lot of government, but he wanted enough government to assert the sovereignty of citizens over corporations.
To his view, nothing was more important to the health of the republic. The better angels among the founders would be aghast. Inequality in America. Inequality in America And what to do about it. A Nation forum, featuring Robert Reich, Dean Baker, Katherine Newman, David Pedulla, Orlando Patterson, Jeff Madrick and Matt Yglesias. Share "After 30-Year Run, Rise of the Super-Rich Hits a Sobering Wall. " So declared a headline in the New York Times in August 2009, documenting the declining number of Americans with a net worth of $30 million and predicting that the Great Recession would reduce the staggering level of inequality in the United States. Although they differ in theme and emphasis, the essays here, commissioned in conjunction with the Next Social Contract Initiative of the New America Foundation, are united by a belief that deep, persistent inequality doesn't merely affect less privileged Americans.
Unlike his predecessor, Barack Obama appears aware of these disparities, telling Times reporter David Leonhardt last year that prosperity must be spread "across the spectrum of regions and occupations and genders and races. "
Naomi Klein: Sticking the Public With the Bill for the Bankers' My city feels like a crime scene, and the criminals are all melting into the night, fleeing the scene. No, I'm not talking about the kids in black who smashed windows and burned cop cars on Saturday. I'm talking about the heads of state who, on Sunday night, smashed social safety nets and burned good jobs in the middle of a recession. Faced with the effects of a crisis created by the world's wealthiest and most privileged strata, they decided to stick the poorest and most vulnerable people in their countries with the bill. How else can we interpret the G20's final communique, which includes not even a measly tax on banks or financial transactions, yet instructs governments to slash their deficits in half by 2013.
This is a huge and shocking cut, and we should be very clear who will pay the price: students who will see their public educations further deteriorate as their fees go up; pensioners who will lose hard earned benefits; public sector workers whose jobs will be eliminated. Jonathan Rée - Variety. I love William James. He’s just about the only philosopher who didn’t end up as either a pettifogging nit-picker or an overbearing egomaniac with delusions of genius. He was generous too – witty, honest, modest and flexible – and more interested in promoting productive conversations than hogging the last word. He was also a brilliant writer. At first glance, his prose may look like an easy outpouring of spontaneous colloquialisms, but in fact he took great pains to make it cover lots of rough ground without any hard words and without any tired ones either.
James was not unsympathetic to religion, and on occasion he was prepared to call himself a Christian, though in a thoroughly secular and untheological sense. James was born in New York in 1842, and brought up to be a creative free spirit. The education of the James siblings, though enviable in many ways, left them ill-equipped for careers back in America. He was very anxious. Meacham: The Right Kind of American Populism - Newsweek. EPA Officials Weigh Sanctions Against BP’s U.S. Operations - Pro. The EPA is considering whether to bar BP from receiving government contracts, a move that would ultimately cost the company billions in revenue and could end its drilling in federally controlled oil fields.
Officials at the Environmental Protection Agency are considering whether to bar BP from receiving government contracts, a move that would ultimately cost the company billions in revenue and could end its drilling in federally controlled oil fields. Over the past 10 years, BP has paid tens of millions of dollars in fines and been implicated in four separate instances of criminal misconduct that could have prompted this far more serious action. Until now, the company's executives and their lawyers have fended off such a penalty by promising that BP would change its ways. That strategy may no longer work. Federal law allows agencies to suspend or bar from government contracts companies that engage in fraudulent, reckless or criminal conduct.
(U.S Coast Guard Photo) Women Will Rule the World - Newsweek.